


there grows a tree in paradise

by orphan_account



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Body Horror, Kylo Ren Has Ladyparts, M/M, Pregnancy Kink
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-23
Updated: 2017-02-01
Packaged: 2018-05-22 17:52:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6089040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kylo Ren is pregnant with the Space Lizard Antichrist. Hux is helpful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

As if finding himself saddled with a wantonly destructive tantrum-pitching fool like Kylo Ren wasn't enough, Hux thinks to himself as he makes his way back from the officers' mess to said fool's private quarters with several heavy bricks of jellified ice-dessert under his arm; as if dealing with this idiot wasn't enough of a chore in the first place, now Ren's gone and gotten himself pregnant.

Hux has known enough females of varying species not to have been thrown completely off balance at the revelation that Lord Ren has spent all this time hiding an actual pussy (and the corresponding pipes and wires) under his voluminous skirts, and Ren's particular relationship to his gender or lack thereof is no concern of Hux's, but the part he wishes he'd anticipated was that he himself would be assigned to tend to Ren's pregnancy cravings, which are manifold and frequently just disgusting in their intensity. As if Hux doesn't have anything better to do than feed Ren ice dessert and bites of fresh fruit and tenderly mop his brow and spend what seems like untold hours with his head stuck between his nominal co-commander's sweaty thighs while Ren swears and weeps and mutters barely intelligible tirades against everything from his parents to the Resistance to that one defecting Storm Trooper to the universe itself. Sure, Hux thinks, there are worse assignments, they just aren't occurring to him at the moment.

In Ren's bedroom, he sets down his burden, relieved that Ren right at this moment appears to be sleeping. He's still amid the tumult of sheets, lying on his side resting his swollen breasts and belly, which seem to grow heavier by the hour. Hux almost pities him, can only imagine what sort of hideous appetite is using his body as a vessel, what will become of him when the thing- whatever it is-- is born. Ren has trained for this, as he never tires of reminding Hux. He's strong enough, in body if not in mind, to bear its ravages. Ren mutters in his sleep, and Hux places a hand on his damp forehead, strokes his loose dark hair away from his face.

Ren snorts, grumbles softly, turns to nuzzle Hux's hand as he wakes. Hux is used to this, Ren's generous and languid affection, his low-lidded eyes looking up at Hux, his lips pursed as if he might kiss the hand that feeds him. The change that a dangerous cocktail of of Force fuckery and pregnancy hormones have wrought in the once-proud Knight of Ren.

“My dear General. Not a moment too soon.”

“So nice to see you awake.”

“Have you brought me what I asked for?”

“As ever, I remain your devoted servant.” Ren rolls his eyes, pressing his lips to the tender inside of Hux's wrist. Sometimes Hux gets the strange feeling that Ren could devour him like this, unhinge his jaw and swallow him whole. He fears the uncanny creature that Ren's become, though it's arguably no worse than the creature he was before his ordeal began.

“How are your tits, Ren?”

“They hurt.” Ren splays his hands over his own chest, cups the overabundance of pale flesh in his fingers. “I'm going to need you to salve my nipples again, General.”

“How do you always know exactly what I want to hear?”

“You act as though this is the least pleasant of your duties.” Ren pauses, probes the corner of his mouth with his tongue as if deep in thought. “I thought you enjoyed attending me. I thought you liked my body like this.”

“Who could? Have you looked at yourself lately? You're a monstrosity.” Hux breaks open a capsule of industrial-strength moisturizer and sits on the bed beside Ren, smearing the stuff on his hands preparatory to applying it to Ren's affected areas; his nipples and areolas, disconcertingly prone these days to drying and cracking. “Lie on your back. Arms up.” Ren obeys, meekly for him, though Hux knows this kind of contact is painful.

“I'm hungry,” Ren announces, grimacing as Hux's cold hands massage the moisturizing salve into his skin. He's right, Hux doesn't completely despise this task; Ren's breasts are agreeably warm and supple to the touch, and there's something of a thrill in the feeling of nipples stiffening against his palms, regardless of who those nipples belong to. Hux is not permitted to satisfy himself while tending to Ren, but sometimes he imagines mounding Ren's soft tits together in his hands and thrusting between them until he comes, his spunk spattering over that lovely firm white throat. Ren, red-faced, bewildered and humiliated and unable to condemn him because he desires Hux's attentions, has been unsubtly courting him for as long as they've known each other. Sometimes Hux feels an unexpected tenderness towards him, wishes fleetingly that Ren (and whatever dreadful thing is at home in his distended stomach) belonged to him.

“Here.” Hux rips open the packaging of one of the remarkably dense bricks of ice dessert and passes it to Ren, who holds it in both hands and gnaws at it with frequent gulps and grunts of satisfaction. Hux had never seen Ren eat before this whole thing started, would have assumed in fact that Ren didn't eat, and now he's guzzling exotic-flavored mauve paste straight from the carton like it might just be the last meal of his life. It's fascinating, really, what a few swiftly dividing cells will do to a man.

“I know what you're thinking about,” Ren pauses in his feeding long enough to say. “You long for your own gratification. You want to take it from my body. You're lonely, General. Tired of stroking yourself off in the dark imagining some faceless woman sucking your cock.”

“That's right, Ren. You have a face now.”

“I'm not a woman.”

“Enough like one to have Supreme Leader's irresponsible experiments performed on you.” Hux rests both his hands on Ren's great belly, feels the thing inside flutter gently against his fingertips. It has its own pulse, he knows, its own hideous little heart beating somewhere beneath Ren's.

“Not irresponsible. I am the only one who can bring them forth. A new generation of servants to the Dark Side. No one else is powerful enough. It's a small sacrifice to make.”

“It seems like hard luck. Ingratitude, a poor use of your strength and your training. Don't you object to being used this way?”

“Do you object to your duties? You don't understand faith or self-sacrifice. You expect to be rewarded with power, but you'll never have enough.” Ren finishes off the brick of ice dessert with a couple more grunting bites and licks his fingers with a deeply contented air. Melting drips of the stuff are spattered on his chest and dribbling down his chin, and he goes after those as well, and as it turns out the sight of him licking sticky dessert residue off his own tits is a somewhat compelling one.

“Look at you.” Hux pulls a handkerchief from his coat pocket, unfolds it with a brisk snap, and tosses it at Ren. “You've become a beast. That thing isn't even born yet and you're acquiescing to its demands.”

“You pity me.” Ren narrows his eyes and dabs at his face, Hux's handkerchief crumpled in one massive fist. “You've always pitied me.”

“Of course I do. You're being manipulated, and you're so well-trained that it would never occur to you not to pretend it's what you want. It'd be completely laughable if it wasn't the saddest thing I've ever seen.”

“And you're not being manipulated. There's no unattainable prize being dangled in front of you.” Ren snorts, and reaches for another ice brick. Hux sits in silence and watches him devour that one, and another, and most of a fourth, before he ventures to touch Ren again. He's permitted to do this, prop Ren up with pillows and sit beside him massaging moisturizer into his back for as long as Ren will tolerate Hux's hands on him. His heavy burden throws knots in his muscles and a tilt in his posture, and Hux kneads his flesh firmly with clenched fists, attuned to its gradual softening and relaxing. Ren makes small noises, chirps and gurgles his gratitude, seems almost to fall asleep as Hux sweats over him. His back, broad and naked, sloping elegantly down to an ass that Hux has certainly seen often enough and would have to say he approves of. Ren seldom bothers with clothes when he's sequestered in his quarters, as he has been out of necessity ever since the swelling in his stomach first asserted itself.

Ren falls asleep again while Hux works on him, and Hux takes the opportunity to get out his datapad and answer correspondence. He does have functions, after all, beyond the care and feeding of Kylo Ren; although his Ren-related duties do seem to demand more of him with every passing day. He glumly supposes that when the unfortunate genetic experiment Ren's carrying is finally born, he'll get stuck wet-nursing it as well.

Hux is about to rise from the bed and make his silent and graceful escape when Ren mumbles awake again, threshing about with his long limbs, grasping clumsily for whatever he can reach like a child having a nightmare. Hux places both hands on his shoulders, helps him roll onto his side, where he lies panting and shivering with his face buried in his arms.

“What's the matter with you now?”

“I couldn't see.”

“Lift your head up and open your eyes.”

“I can see now,” Ren snarls, throwing his matted hair out of his face with a painful-looking hitch of his neck and struggling to sit up. “It was a dream. I saw her. She was here.”

“Your mother?” Hux perches his hands lightly on Ren's shoulders, but Ren shrugs him off, still rocking back and forth in his futile efforts to lever himself upright.

“No. Her.” Ren's eyes are wild, his pallor more pallid than usual, the scattering of moles and freckles on his face standing out starkly against it. “She has no name. She's older than the Jedi and the Sith, older than the Force. Supreme Leader told me. I'm the one who has to bring her forth.”

“What do you mean? What kind of nonsense is that? You had a bad dream.”

“Go now.” Ren sinks his face into his pillow again. “I don't need to be comforted. Leave me alone.” Hux would be only too happy to do as he says, but something about Ren's ranting has him unnerved; it's not in his nature to seethe around uttering cryptic pronouncements, at least not without a light saber in one hand.

“What's happening to you?” Hux sits on the edge of the bed, warily, poised to flee if Ren lashes out at him. “Has that thing taken over your mind as well as your body?”

“Go away.”

“I'm not going to leave you like this.” Hux feels a familiar dread, the suspicion that whatever's happening to Ren will destroy him, leave him dead but breathing, an empty shell to be filled again and again with Snoke's broods of nightmares. At certain times, like now, he feels as if he can see it almost as clearly as if he himself were endowed with Ren's sensitivity to the Force.

“When she arrives...” Ren shakes his head, still buried in the pillow. “It won't be enough. Nothing I can do will be enough.” Hux grasps for his hand, his wrist, presses his fingers to Ren's hammering pulse. His skin is hot and clammy to the touch, and he's shaking, slightly but perceptibly.


	2. Chapter 2

“I don't know what you're talking about.” Ren must be ill. Running a fever. Hux senses a particular glimmering brightness in the air around him that Ren only projects when he's in pain. Hux determines to use whatever ingenuity he possesses, whatever skills he has at his disposal, to keep him from feeling like this.

“You're afraid,” Ren says. It sounds like an accusation. “Why? Why do I keep hearing you simpering like a coward in there? What do you think is going to happen to you?”

“I'm not afraid for myself.” He's loath to admit it, of course, but he doesn't think Ren deserves this. Hux rests one hand on Ren's bare quivering back, and Ren doesn't shrug him off.

“More of your pity. Your cowardice.”

“Be quiet.” Hux strokes Ren's sweat-damp hair away from his neck, trying to think only of instructions; clear and simple, urging him to breathe. He tries to project, to surround Ren with his thoughts and presence, the way Ren's presence surrounds him. “Would you like me to stimulate you now? An orgasm would help you relax.” Ren nods, somewhat sulkily, and begins the ponderous task of heaving himself over onto his back.

Hux is undeniably skilled in this particular art, and finds himself able to enjoy it in the abstract, almost as though Ren really is the faceless woman of his fantasies. Plausibly, a woman could have great solid thighs like that, taut and springy with muscle, lightly furred with fine dark hair. A woman- granted, not a very fastidious one-- could have Ren's wiry thatch of black curls covering the warm firm mound of her pussy, but now Hux betrays himself by thinking of Ren instead of some anonymous conquest as he parts the sleek lips of Ren's cunt with his fingers and lowers his head to lap at him. Ren is always responsive, always encouraging. Acting like he's been written a prescription for Hux's mouth; it's good for him, helps him sleep, gives him (even more of) an appetite.

Hux balances himself with his hands on Ren's hips, bathes his tongue in the foreign taste of Ren's relentless arousal; someone told him once that women tasted different when they were pregnant, there was a sharpness to it, a kind of musk, and Hux doesn't know if that's true but he knows that Ren always tastes like he's about to come. Hux easily slips a finger into him, mouthing at Ren's clit, and soon he feels Ren clench and tremble around him; slick softness, dripping wet, and Hux can't help but think of letting his cock sink into it, pressing himself against Ren's grotesque distended abdomen as he mounts him like a beast.

“I know what you're thinking,” Ren says. He's sitting up now with his hands crossed over his chest, that smug post-orgasmic look on his face that Hux has come to know and loathe. “You really have the simplest mind I've ever encountered. So one-dimensional. So predictable.” Hux makes no effort to amend his thoughts, only embroiders them with more salacious details: Ren clawing his back and crying out, moaning like a cheap spaceport whore as Hux pistons relentlessly into him.

“You flatter yourself. Of course, most men do, in their thoughts.”

“I could satisfy you.” Hux settles his head in Ren's lap again, licks softly at his pale inner thigh. “I somewhat suspect that you've never been fucked before.” Ren's condition, after all, couldn't possibly be the result of any kind of conventional intercourse.

“You're delusional.” Ren turns away, gesturing dismissively for Hux to continue. Hux keeps his head down for a while, suckling disinterestedly at Ren's pussy, which is relaxed and spread wide around his massaging fingers. Ren is pacified, half-awake, muttering softly to himself and stroking Hux's hair; his big hands are clumsy, unaccustomed to gentleness. Hux has one hand on himself, rubbing his cock through his trousers, which can hardly have escaped Ren's notice. Hux is bolder than he should be, bolder than he's been before. He slips his cock out and wraps his hand around it, nuzzling deeper into Ren's wetness and warmth, closing his eyes and imagining being stroked to completion by that endlessly accommodating tunnel of flesh.

“You won't get that ridiculous little piss-pipe of yours anywhere near me,” Ren says, and Hux feels the teasing not-quite-caress of an invisible hand on his throat. Of course he won't; Ren would kill him first, or at the very least leave him bruised and half-strangled and unable to swallow for weeks. What kind of suicidal impulse, then, leads Hux to kick off his shorts and trousers and climb into bed with Ren and crouch between his spread legs? Why do Ren's taunts invariably have the power to short-circuit Hux's sense of self-preservation?

He buries his cock in Ren's open pussy and there's a moment of unspeakable relief before his head snaps back with the force of unseen hands- are they hands, really, intangible Force projections of Ren's actual flesh and bone?-- throttling him for all they're worth. Hux gags, feels his stomach heave and his heart clench, feels his eyes bulge in their sockets. Ren's voice is inside his head, still mocking him, though he can't make sense of the words with Ren's merciless Force-grip cutting off the oxygen to his brain.

Then suddenly the pressure eases, and Hux gasps a grateful breath, white lights sparkling at the edges of his field of vision, threatening to overwhelm it entirely. He's still inside Ren, but now Ren's thighs are squeezing his waist, Ren's callused heels digging like spurs into the small of his back.

“See. You're not very good at this."

“Neither are you.”

“What were you expecting?”

“You're not a virgin.” Hux fully expects to be choked again for pointing out the obvious, but Ren's arms are slack at his sides, his eyes closed and his lips parted, his unpretty face almost peacefully composed. Hux begins, very gingerly, to thrust into him; Ren's still gloriously wet around him, wetter than anyone's been for him in recent memory, and Hux strokes his stretch-marked sides and presses his stomach to Ren's and reaches up to fondle his heavy breasts, wondering not for the first time what they'd looked like before they started to swell up with sustenance for Snoke's unimaginable offspring.

“Of course not, you idiot.” Ren's hands are cradling Hux's throat, touching him very lightly, almost as if Ren's afraid of bruising the fragile skin there. There's something deeply intoxicating about this, riding atop Ren and feeling up his swollen tits, anticipating having his airway closed off at any moment while Ren's iron-muscled thighs slowly tighten around him. The distended pregnant belly straining against his is a novel but not entirely unwelcome sensation; it's warm, slightly yielding, full of the gentle alien pulsations of gestating life.

“I wondered about it- I mean-- her, if you're so sure it's female. How did she get in there, anyway?”

“Leader Snoke didn't fuck me. She's not his, not in the strictly physical sense.” Hux supposes that's as much of an explanation as he's going to get, and anyway he finds himself caring less and less the closer he gets to coming, and he wedges a hand between their bodies to rub at Ren's clit because it's only courteous, isn't it, to get him off as well. Ren doesn't come- too desensitized, probably, from having his way with Hux's face earlier-- and Hux doesn't wait for him, but he'd swear he feels the thing in Ren's stomach flail peevishly against him when his orgasm finally hits; which only manages to slightly dampen his enthusiasm.

“Clean up your mess,” Ren orders him once he's withdrawn.

“You can still walk, can't you? Go clean yourself up.” There's a refresher en suite, obviously; Ren's accommodations are the finest on the ship.

“This is the result of your carelessness.” Ren's touching himself now, one hand between his sweat-shining thighs, fingers parting the damp curls of his pubic hair and slipping between his folds. Hux's fluid is there, beading white on the dark lips of Ren's pussy, and the sight shouldn't make Hux's mouth water and his sore tongue twitch with the desire to taste himself, but it does and he's pretty sure it's his own fault, that Ren isn't manipulating him now. Hux falls to his knees again of his own free will, and by the time Ren releases him he's lightheaded and numb from the nose down and reeking of sweat and sex. He showers vengefully and returns to his own quarters as the ship cycles into artificial morning, his tongue still heavy with Ren's ineradicable taste.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References to past Kylo/Snoke and (underage) Kylo/Luke in this bit.

Hux is nervous as a cat for the next few days, slinking around waiting for the other shoe to fall, for Snoke to call him to task for what he's done. Privately he doesn't think of it as much of a betrayal; he's already fucked Kylo Ren with his tongue and his fingers more times than he can count, after all. Still, he's restless, uneasy, wakes panting from nightmares in which his own DNA colonizes Ren's swollen stomach, his own monstrous offspring tear Ren's flesh in their haste to be born. He's racked with guilt, stooped and sleepless with it, unable to think of anything but Snoke's surely impending retribution.

At last he's called into the audience chamber, alone. The enthroned projection of Supreme Leader Snoke is expressionless as it beckons him, and Hux steps forward, his military bearing unimpeachable although he's willing his legs not to give out underneath him.

“You weary of your duties, General. You wish to be freed from Kylo Ren, to no longer have to witness his suffering.”

“Supreme Leader.” Hux straightens his back and squares his arms at his sides, lifting his head to stare directly into the holo projection's depthless eyes. “While it is true that I've found this current state of affairs slightly inconvenient, it's no business of mine--” Hux gasps, chokes, sinks to his knees under the weight of a sudden and terrible awareness, a vision like a waking nightmare that he's forced to endure with his eyes wide open.

He sees Ren: naked, splendid with muscle, his belly flat and his small tits riding smooth and high on his pectorals. Snoke's hands bind him, these great grotesque things mottled with scar tissue and bloated with warts and tumorous growths, Snoke's crooked and gnarled claws withered-dark against the searing whiteness of Ren's flesh as Snoke toys with him, pets and pleasures him as Hux has, as if Ren were a cherished concubine. Ren's eyes are closed, his legs open, and Snoke's fingers press something inside him, even as Ren arches his back and pants in a way that Hux recognizes as signaling his orgasm.

“What is it? What did you do to him?” Hux can't hear himself speak, but Snoke's disembodied voice surrounds him, crawlingly, curdling the marrow of his bones.

“I found him, and I knew he was strong enough to carry her. He's not female, but his body has the necessary attributes.” The vision repeats itself: Snoke easing his fingers into Ren, making him come. Snoke inserting something, Hux can't quite make it out, a sort of translucent smooth-shelled orb with something dark moving sluggishly inside it.

Snoke releases him, and he comes to again, still on his knees before his Supreme Leader. He's broken out in a cold sweat, despite the heat that seems to be consuming him from the inside out. All he can see is Ren spreading his legs for Snoke's hands; Ren, lean and small-breasted, not yet twisted into the sickening mother-goddess parody he would become. That overspilling fecundity that mocks him, his great belly weighing him down like a fleshy ball and chain.

“You must continue to render your services, General. When he labors to bring her forth, you must remain with him.”

“What's going to happen to him?”

“You'll remain with him,” Snoke repeats, in a way that seems oddly as if it's meant to be soothing. Hux can extract no further information from him, but as soon as he's dismissed he returns to Ren's quarters for the first time in days, trying not to look too shell-shocked and sweaty. Ren, of course, easily picks up on his lack of composure. He's propped up in bed gnawing on a dripping melon rind, juice running down his chin and pooling in the shallow wells of his collarbones.

“Hux, you're looking very peaked these days. It's unattractive.” He brings one wrist to his mouth and laps up a bright spatter of juice; what's the name of that melon, Hux doesn't remember, it grows in moist climates and looking at its bloody red innards apparently makes him queasy. “You went to confess to Supreme Leader that you stuck your cock in me, didn't you?”

“I didn't--”

“It's all right. My birth canal is more or less doomed, but we can have some fun with the thing before it gets ripped to shreds.”

“Your what?”

“That's what it is. It wasn't actually made for sheathing your tiny little prick, you know.” Ren tears into a fresh slice of melon; there's a pile of them in a bowl on the table beside his bed, along with dishes of pared kavasa and passionfruit and a basket of fat orange berries. “Come here, I want you to do it again.”

“Supreme Leader...” The fact remains that Snoke never explicitly forbade Hux from doing what he certainly knows Hux has done. And the fact remains that Ren is naked and covered in sticky fruit nectar and bombed out of his skull on hormones. And the fact remains that Ren, while not female, possesses certain attributes that Hux finds irresistible.

“I find it amusing that you're pretending to have scruples now. Come over here, will you, there are some new positions I want to try.”

“I don't know if it's wise to put my cock anywhere near that nameless horror you're lugging around in there, Ren.”

“She won't harm you. Of course she won't.” Ren's sultry, conciliatory, batting his eyelashes like a woman, reaching out to grasp Hux's sleeve and draw him closer. Hux sinks down on the bed beside him and lowers his head to mouth at Ren's neck, tastes the bittersweet savor of unfamiliar fruit. His hands, without any input whatsoever from him, grasp and stroke and squeeze the great plump teardrops of Ren's breasts. They're hot to the touch and, judging by Ren's small high-pitched noises, very sensitive to stimulation.

“Snoke showed me... I saw what you were before.” Hux is speaking against Ren's skin, feeling it warm with his breath. “It's a shame I never knew. I'm sure I could have had you then.”

“Presumptuous, as always.” Ren's arms are draped loosely around Hux's neck, and the look on his face is as clear an invitation as Hux has ever seen: parted lips and half-lidded eyes, an attitude of undiluted supplication usually only glimpsed in the private sanctity of Hux's lights-out fantasies.

“Who was it, Ren? Who had the inestimable pleasure of being your first fuck?” Hux nibbles Ren's sweet warm throat, kisses the soft swell of flesh beneath his collarbones. “Who could possibly have been so lucky? I'm sure he didn't deserve it.”

“My master.” Ren closes his eyes, letting his head drop back against the pillow, groaning encouragement; his pale chest rises like a cresting wave, and Hux draws a nipple into his mouth and works at it delicately with his lips and tongue until Ren whimpers and pulls at the short hairs on the back of his neck. “Luke. My master. I was too young.”

“Hmm.” Hux nearly succeeds at making a sympathetic noise while his mouth is still busy with Ren's tits. He's mounding them together with both hands now, licking and sucking at each in turn as Ren writhes and gasps under him. He tries to imagine it: the Jedi master and his young pupil. Ren; not yet Kylo Ren, not the knight that Hux knows, but a gawky teenage girl with a fierce face and long coltish limbs. And no idea how easily her own body could betray her.

“I'm sorry,” Hux says; he has one hand between Ren's legs, fingers searching out the slick opening there. Ren's strong thighs are spread and trembling, the high firm mound of his belly heaving and swaying with his breath.

“I didn't say I wasn't willing.”

“He was your master.” Hux isn't sure this is a conversation he ought to be having while he penetrates Ren, but he's too far gone now. Tearing his shorts and trousers down with one hand and guiding his cock with the other, he eases himself in, only for Ren to throw a leg over him and muscle him down onto the bed so that he's lying on his back with all that not-inconsiderable weight on top of him. He's frankly astonished that Ren's still capable of such deft maneuvers, and frankly entranced by the resulting view of Ren's breasts. “And, not incidentally, your uncle.”

“Blood means very little to me.”

“Clearly.”

“You're to be quiet while I fuck you, General.” Hux doesn't mind keeping his mouth shut as Ren rides him; he's effectively pinned to the bed by the great weight bearing down on his dick, and Ren doesn't let up until Hux has come twice inside him. Then, as usual, he banishes Hux from his quarters and settles back into his nest, drawing the sheets and blankets protectively around him. Hux's last glimpse of Ren remains with him as he slips into his own bed that night; limp and exhausted with pleasure, his hair sweat-damp and tangled on the pillow and his face flushed and gentle in sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SPACE ULTRASOUNDS AND SPONGE BATHS

The next time Hux is summoned to Ren's bed, he makes sure he's prepared. He has with him a few choice pieces of equipment he'd recquisitioned from medbay; portable things, that fit easily into the pockets of his coat when disassembled. Hux refuses to be defeated by the creature in Ren's stomach, refuses to live in fear of it before it's even born. He's determined, first of all, to learn what he's up against, and Ren of course knows what he's planning as soon as he enters the room.

“Empty your pockets,” he says, and Hux does, laying out the apparatus on the bed for Ren's scrutiny.

“See, these fit together like this, and this piece goes in what you referred to as your birth canal.” Hux picks up the slender metal probe and attaches the umbilical-like adapter cord to one end. “It scans the contents of the uterus and displays them as a holographic model.”

“I don't need to see her. I know what she looks like.”

“Never mind.” Hux needs to see for himself, doesn't necessarily trust Ren's uncanny visions. “It doesn't hurt, Ren. It'll only take a few seconds.”

“You don't need to. She's there whether you can see her or not. She won't be asleep much longer. Don't worry, Hux, you'll recognize her when she comes.” Lying on his side in the midst of a tumult of blankets and sheets, Ren stretches his arms over his head and closes his eyes, seeming oddly content.

Hux is close enough to smell Ren's skin, the salt of his sweat, the slight musty odor of his unwashed hair. He touches Ren's bare shoulder, feels him flinch from the contact, although he's doing his best to feign sleep.

“You need to bathe, Ren.”

“Leave me alone.”

“You're starting to stink. It's pathetic.” Hux strokes Ren's lank hair away from his face; Ren bristles at the touch, baring his teeth in a snarl.

“Don't be ashamed if you need help. If you're not as mobile as you used to be, it's perfectly understandable.”

“I don't need your help. Leave me alone so I can rest.”

“You can rest after you've washed. And after I've used this to look inside you.” Hux applies a disposable latex sheath to the probe and makes sure it's well-lubricated, though Ren hardly needs it. His near-constant state of high arousal tends to keep things wet enough, and Hux coaxes his legs apart and meets very little resistance when he eases the long metal instrument into Ren's slick opening.

“It's cold,” Ren says. “A lot colder and harder than your prick, General.”

“I'm sorry. I know it's uncomfortable. It won't take very long.” A holographic projection is beginning to take shape on the surface of the console, pulsing dimly at first, growing brighter and brighter as it takes on more dimension, starting to sprout limbs and eyes and what Hux almost thinks look like feathers. It's not human- of course it's not, there was little chance of that-- but it's like no other being Hux has ever seen.

“What is it?”

“She's like a sun. She is powerful and ancient, and life flowers forth wherever she goes. She had no flesh of her own, no form, until now. It's a great honor to have been chosen to bring her here.” Ren's eyes are still closed, and he's muttering strangely, practically chanting like a hypnotism subject. Hux adjusts the long metal wand inside him, causing him to hiss with pain.

“All right?”

“It pinches. Take it out.”

“Nearly finished.” Hux saves the projected image and sends it to his own datapad for later perusal. He removes the probe as gently as he can, discards the sheath, dismantles the apparatus and returns it to its packaging. He can't stop seeing the thing that Ren calls Her; avian or reptilian or both, great glowing yellow eyes, long tail and numerous claws and glorious purple plumage. Some inscrutable ancient creature, belonging to a stranger time.

“That wasn't so bad, was it? It's in your best interests to humor me, you know. Now I suppose you need help washing yourself.”

“I told you I don't need it. I don't need you. Go away, I'll call for you if I want you.”

“This isn't good for your health, you know. You can't live like this.”

“Go away.”

Hux does go away, but only as far as the fresher, where he acquires an urn of hot soapy water and a washcloth. Ren curls his lip in a halfhearted snarl when he divines Hux's intentions, but seems to lack the energy to put up much of a fight. He lies still under Hux's hands, his eyes closed and his arms limp at his sides, only the occasional sullen twitch of the corner of his mouth indicating his displeasure. Hux bathes him thoroughly and efficiently with the wet cloth, noting every separate sensitive part of him; his armpits, with their surprisingly fine streaks of dark hair. His breasts, and the tender skin underneath. His belly and inner thighs, and his pussy, which by now Hux is pleasantly familiar with. It's a pretty thing, really, almost dainty with those graceful petal-like folds and the tiny sweet knot of his clitoris. Picture-perfect, like an anatomical illustration. Hux has what he recognizes is a strange fondness for it, doesn't relish the prospect of it being torn to shreds in the brutal paroxysms of labor that Ren's apparently foreseen.

“That's right.” Ren laughs bitterly, slumping away from Hux's hands. “I won't be much good for you after that. You'll have to find somewhere else to stick it.”

“I don't think that would be the best use of my time.” Hux wrings out the cloth and lays it aside and allows himself the rare and peaceful pleasure of sprawling on the bed beside Ren; his body solid and smooth and radiating heat like a small sun.

“You can't sleep here.” Ren nudges Hux with an elbow. “Go back to your own bed.”

“I'm not sleeping.”

“What are you doing exactly?”

“Only trying to rest.” There's something about Ren's heaviness that makes Hux sympathize with him, until he almost feels as if he himself is burdened with some sort of swiftly gestating disaster. He longs to close his eyes for a while, to forget where and what he is, to feel Ren beside him in sleep as if the two of them were more to each other than rivals with an uneasy truce. Increasingly he finds himself feeling soft towards Ren, wondering if there was any set of circumstances under which they could have loved each other.

“I don't need your pity.” As usual, though Hux isn't thinking particularly loudly, Ren's overheard enough of his internal monologue to become irritated with him. “I will never belong to you. I'm not like you. I don't have your craven need to be reassured that someone cares about me.”

“I don't pity you.” Hux reaches for Ren without thinking, ends up with his trousered crotch pressed hard against the small of Ren's back.

“I don't need you to lie to me either.” Ren stretches, plainly luxuriating in Hux's attention. The muscular undulations of his firm narrow back against Hux's warming cock are nothing short of compelling, and Hux feels again the thrill of the not-explicitly-forbidden; he's bold enough to fuck Kylo Ren, to take what belongs to Supreme Leader Snoke.

“I'm glad this at least makes you feel important. You have so little to cling to, General. I'm glad that fucking me makes you feel powerful.”

“Be quiet.” Hux fumbles down his trousers and undershorts, presses his cock into the smooth furrow between Ren's buttocks. He's hard now, thinking of Ren's taste in his mouth, all those times Ren had cried out and clenched around him, Hux's ears ringing with his praises. Ren's wet softness, the delicate pink flesh between his legs. All the times Hux's fingers entered him, spread him open, all Hux's patient rubbing and stroking, everything he's done to soothe Ren as his belly swelled and his breasts overflowed and he grew heavy and hungry, confined himself to his quarters to await the ultimate indignity of being split down the middle by the hideous thing he's carrying.

“I don't need it,” Ren complains. “You should stop feeling sorry for me.” His voice is quiet now, rueful, no longer commanding. Hux kisses Ren's neck beneath his hair, tastes the sweetness of fresh perspiration, a film of delicate salt on his lips. He pushes into Ren rudely, without warning, Ren's neck held tightly in his teeth as if Hux were trying to prevent him from escaping. Ren is wet enough to accommodate him; he arches back against Hux, urging him on.

“You could do this a thousand times,” he says. “You could come inside me every hour of every day for the rest of your life, and still I wouldn't belong to you.”

“If this is how you talk to men, it's no wonder you've only had two.”

“A very poor sort of man you are.” There's a trace of fondness in Ren's voice now, a catch in his breath as Hux bends to his task; half expecting Ren to grow impatient with his long steady thrusts and dump him onto his back again.

“I'm enough of a man to accept your challenge, Ren. Every hour of every day for the rest of my life?” Hux closes his eyes, rolls his hips lazily, luxuriates in Ren's welcoming warmth. “Why don't you tell me what I'm thinking now, since you know better than I do.”

“You're imagining that you're the one who's made me like this.” Ren sighs, rocks back and forth as if he's trying to roll himself over onto his stomach; which position, Hux thinks, can't possibly be good for Her. “You have the same fantasies that all men have. You've thought of this often. Whenever you're with a woman, you imagine impregnating her. Staking your claim in that brutishly ordinary way.”

“That's not what happened to you, is it?” Hux nibbles at Ren's neck, kisses at the skin he'd just bruised, and he's rewarded with what may just be his favorite of Ren's noises: a high-pitched whine, very desperate and drawn-out and minor-key. “There's nothing ordinary about the way you conceived.”

“You think I've been dishonest with you. I told you Leader Snoke never fucked me.” Ren finally succeeds in flopping onto his stomach, and Hux mounts him from behind, which is an odd position to be in with Ren's great belly wobbling around between him and the mattress. Hux is tempted to crow aloud in some kind of half-understood primal triumph, let loose a good long howl to let any other fertile males in the vicinity know, in no uncertain terms, that Ren belongs to him.

“You're a fool,” Ren says, undoubtedly having intercepted Hux's thoughts. “How long should I allow myself to be fucked by a fool?”

“As you said yourself. Only a thousand times.”

Hux finishes inside Ren with a grunt that's probably a bit more self-satisfied than he intended, and Ren, for once, has no orders to issue. He turns on his side and lies clutching himself, and Hux is fairly certain he didn't climax this time, but when he reaches for Ren a familiar invisible force bats his hands away.

“There's a party trick I haven't seen in a while.”

“She takes more of me each day. My strength feeds her, as it was meant to.” Ren opens and shuts the door to the refresher, makes lights flicker desultorily on and off, as if to demonstrate that he can still manipulate the Force as he used to. “There's little enough left. By the time she's born, I will have forfeited all my power.” Ren speaks as if he's already depleted, lying slackly on his side; matter-of-fact, drained of all his anger.

“There's nothing I can do about that.” Hux finally succeeds in parting Ren's thighs with his hands, and he strokes Ren's rough tangle of pubic hair, feels the tightly curled coarseness of it, damp against his fingertips. “There are things that are beyond my influence. I don't understand where your power comes from, or how it can be taken from you.” Hux opens Ren and rubs at him with the pads of his fingers; this is one thing he can do, one way he can be of use to Ren now.

“I do like it, you know,” Hux says. “Seeing you like this. Your head thrown back and your mouth open and your legs spread for my hands. I'd go so far as to say that sometimes you really are beautiful.”

“And you're a sycophant and a flatterer.” Ren grasps Hux's wrist, gently, not to restrain or rebuke him but apparently just to feel the tendons working under the skin as Hux continues to stroke him. It's a warm touch; fond, casual, trusting. Hux feels that pang in his heart again, that strange feeling of regret that he can do so little to help Ren, that he has to watch him be destroyed like this.

“When this is over- I mean, when She comes--”

“I'll have no need of you after that. You'll be free to service someone else.” Ren opens his eyes, mouth twitching into a smirk. “Satisfy your sexual appetites elsewhere.”

“Won't I be called upon to serve you then? When you're a new mother?” Hux takes up his customary position between Ren's spread legs; kneeling on the floor at the foot of the bed, one long firm-muscled calf brushing each shoulder. “I'd think you'd have even more needs to be satisfied.” He kisses Ren's inner thighs, and Ren rewards him with a rare genuine laugh. He quiets, calms, lies still as Hux works patiently. Sometimes- rarely-- Ren can't come, and it leaves them both frustrated, and Hux with a sense of failure entirely disproportionate to the task.

Hux succeeds this time, after what seems like hours; leaving Ren sweetly exhausted, facedown and drooling in his pillow, starting to snore practically as soon as Hux's lips have left him. He grunts softly and rolls over, leaving a narrow margin of mattress that Hux decides to claim for himself, if only briefly, if only because Ren is so agreeable when he's spasmed himself to sleep like this. He feels a dim but unmistakable glow of pride, even feels kindly disposed towards Her; she's the one who brought Ren's peculiarities to Hux's attention, after all. Without Her, Hux would have never ended up in Ren's bed. Of course, fucking Snoke's pregnant apprentice is a bit of an odd feather to have in his cap, but Hux is, as accused, desperate to distinguish himself somehow. He's easy, breathing lightly, very nearly content himself as he curves his body around Ren's and settles down to sleep.


	5. Chapter 5

Hux's contentment, as usual, is short-lived. He wakes in a few hours to find Ren delirious, half-conscious, boiling with fever. He's muttering to himself in a dream, asking for something, posing some repeated question that Hux doesn't understand and Hux doesn't know if it's the Force or something older and darker reaching cold tendrils into his mind and mingling its consciousness with his but he senses a presence in the room that's neither his nor Ren's and it refuses to be placated by his attempts to soothe it; go back to sleep, he thinks, not now, not now, but the thing-- the creature, whatever it is- refuses. It's Her, crying out in the darkness. Her, poised to destroy Ren's body from the inside out.

Panicked, Hux pounds buttons on his communicator and summons everyone he can think of: officers, administrators, medical staff, anyone who'd conceivably have any reason to be awake at this hour. It's Captain Phasma who shows up, cool and officious in full chromed armor, and directs the loose pandemonium that follows. It ends with Ren installed in medbay, pricked full of needles under the white sheet, fitted with a catheter and intravenous drip tubes and every kind of monitoring equipment in the ship's medical arsenal. He's settled into deep sleep again, silent except for the long slow push and pull of his breathing which Hux listens to gratefully, perched in a chair beside the bed. They're alone now, and Hux finds himself holding Ren's wrist, his fingers resting lightly over the pulse point. As if he's another piece of monitoring equipment, as if measuring Ren's vital signs is the only function he has.

“I know Snoke wouldn't try to kill you,” he says, though he knows Ren can't hear him. “Not on purpose, anyway.” Ren's lips part, and his eyelashes flutter. One of the machines he's hitched up to beeps softly. He's awake.

“I'm sorry.” Awake, but not entirely aware. His fever's been cooled by various artificial means, and it hasn't touched his brain, but he's clearly still delirious.

“What are you talking about?”

“She spoke to you, didn't she?”

“Something did.” Hux reaches out, passes a hand over Ren's forehead. The skin is damp, warm against his but no longer burning. Ren groans, turns away from Hux's touch.

“She can't... if she gets that close to you, she'll destroy you. Your mind is ordinary. It has no defense against her.”

“It's a comfort that you're still capable of insulting me.”

“I don't know what you're so afraid of.”

“I'm afraid of what's happening to you. I'm afraid that Snoke will let her consume you, that nothing will be left of you when this is over.”

“You don't want to lose me.” Ren's smiling now, lying on his side, resting easy. Hux strokes his sweat-dampened hair, gently loosens the tangles with his fingers, and Ren lets him. He tries to remember, to figure out at what point he started to take pleasure in his obligations toward Ren, at what point the pity and revulsion he felt had coalesced into something resembling fondness. He doesn't want to lose Ren now, not to Snoke, not to whatever nameless horror he's allied himself with. The mysterious Her, this devourer from beyond the stars.

“I don't suppose it matters what I want.” Hux presses gently at Ren's temples with his fingertips, begins to rub in slow circles, making Ren twitch and groan with pleasure. It's occurred to Hux before that Ren is starved for touch, that Snoke's spent years denying him every necessary human comfort. Privation, asceticism, devotion to his training; only to become a vessel for some greater power, little better than a broodmare.

“Very little,” Ren agrees, turning his head to nuzzle Hux's hands as if he can't help himself, as if his body itself needs to express its gratitude. He presses his lips to the pulse point of Hux's wrist, starts to suck delicately at the soft skin there.

“Don't.” Hux rebuffs him, gently, pulling his hands away. “Not here.” Ren looks up at him, eyes dull, glazed with pain. 

“You're sick. You're not thinking clearly.”

“Don't say that.” Ren looks more frightened than Hux has ever seen him; trembling and fever-flushed, eyes darting around as if seeking some avenue of escape from his waking nightmare. He's unaccustomed to this, Hux knows. His body is a great source of pride and strength to him, an immensely effective weapon, and he's steadily losing control of it.

'You're sick. You should rest.” Hux rises, finds his attempt to leave the room cut short by Ren flinging out one arm and snatching frantically at the back of his coat. It occurs to Hux to be smug; he'd imagined this, on occasion. Ren needing him, clutching at him, desiring him unreasonably. He was unsure if it was anything he'd ever actually want.

“Hux.”

“What?”

“Stay.”

“Not so easily, Ren. You can't command me as if I were a dog.” Hux moves towards the door, and Ren's hand loses its grip and retreats boneless to his side. He's so insignificant now, so utterly diminished, a weary flesh cocoon surrounding a creature that Supreme Leader Snoke himself fears to name. Hux can practically see the strength ebbing from him, the parasite burrowed inside him slowly draining his vitality.

“You want me to live, don't you? As myself. You want me to survive this. Please.” Ren's hand still hangs limply over the edge of the bed, fingers curling and uncurling, twitching as if he might reach for Hux again.

“I seem to recall you saying that it doesn't matter what I want.” Hux retreats to Ren's bedside, sits down on the stiff mattress next to him, feels Ren relax at the restoration of close contact. Hux's hip is propped against Ren's side, and the burning warmth filtered through layers of sheets makes him think of his own childhood illnesses, alone in a narrow bed, half-dreaming, listening to soft footsteps crossing back and forth outside his door.

“If I die like this, I'll have fulfilled my purpose. For Supreme Leader, and for Her, and when She begins her work...”

“Enough. Go back to sleep.”

“I won't wake up. She will, in my body.” Ren is trembling as he lies on his side, clawing out at Hux with clammy hands, pressing his face into the pillow underneath it as if he's seeking shelter, trying to burrow through it to the floor. “She'll shed her own skin and put on mine, and you won't know the difference.”

“You're dreaming, Ren. You're still delirious.”

“I can't go back to sleep,” Ren insists, and Hux begins to long for the days when all Ren demanded from him was a constant supply of jellified fruit ice and oral sex. That seems so simple in comparison to the mess he's in now, watching Ren flail around in a fever and moan half-intelligibly about eldritch space serpents walking around in his skin. Hux decides to leave Ren, for the time being, in the capable pseudopods of the medical droids, and if that evening he jerks himself off to the memory of fucking Ren from behind- scenting him, snuffling at him, clasping Ren's neck in his teeth-- while he lay immobilized by his swollen stomach, well, he can't really blame himself.


	6. Chapter 6

Hux occupies himself with other matters while Ren is in sickbay, not requiring his attentions; not urgently, at any rate, although he does receive a series of increasingly plaintive messages that lead him to suspect Ren of taking issue with the formality of their arrangement. This is unsurprising, but if it weren't for Snoke implanting feathered-serpent abominations in him, he would have continued wanting nothing to do with Hux; certainly wanting nothing to do with his mouth or his dick, both of which rate frequent mentions in Ren's explicit missives.

He ignores them when he can, replies tersely when he can't, citing the numerous and staggering responsibilities of a high-ranking First Order officer, making it clear that nothing less than a direct order from Snoke himself will send him scuttling to Ren's side, and for a while he receives no word from Ren. There is no peace in this reprieve, however, because the presence he's identified as Her won't let him sleep. Her feathers and scales and her staring eyes, her physical form is always there but not quite there and she tries to speak to him but her voice isn't ready yet. It's a low unnerving gargle, unformed, slurring words he almost recognizes, and he wakes from these dreams with sweat-soaked sheets plastered to his body and pleas for help dying in his throat.

Then one night he dreams of Ren, his splendid naked body, what he was before Snoke despoiled him; slender-hipped, column-straight, long legs and flat belly and perfect little palm-sized tits, and the apparition beckons him closer but when it parts its red hallucinatory lips and speaks the voice is not Ren's but Hers.

“What do you want?” Hux demands of the creature, and She-- it isn't quite right, the way she manipulates Ren's body, the set of the shoulders is too low, the sway of the hips too sinuous- moves towards him and reaches for him and Ren's burning skin touches his. She's a sun, reaching out, grasping and burning him, the heart of a small and furious star.

“No matter,” she says. “General, what do you want? Have I shown it to you?” Her voice is closer to human now, but unpleasantly thick, muddied, full of slow bubbles rising to the surface.

“Not this.” Not Ren, puppeteered by some nightmare. Not Ren driven from his own body.

“I can give you this. What you want, what you've always wanted.” Her body- Ren's body-- presses against his, all tightly coiled muscle primed and tensed to spring, and Her voice is so much like Ren's that Hux's heart feels like it's being boiled alive in his chest cavity. Ren's lips part and Her tongue presses into Hux's mouth and She tastes like blood and bile and scalded skin, like the terror and agony of a billion lives being snuffed out at once, and Hux wakes in the darkness with his chest heaving and his hands clawing at nothing, reaching out for Her. For Ren, for whatever's left of him, and he fumbles for his comm and taps out a hasty message and doesn't breathe again until he hears it chime with Ren's answer.

Hux moves silently through the night of the ship, meets no one on his way to Ren's quarters, barely keeps himself from falling against the door before it opens. He knows what he must look like, wild-haired and sleepless and stumbling, fresh from his nightmares, and he doesn't blame Ren for being a little smug at seeing him like this.

“Still allowing your cowardice to get the better of you?” Ren's sprawled on his side in bed, as usual, all the sheets and blankets wrapped around him, and Hux collapses on the mattress at his side. He shoves at Ren's bulk and burrows into the covers and Ren grudgingly makes room for him, his swollen stomach warm and bulging against Hux's side, and Hux can't keep himself from flinching away from it, from the creature that hangs suspended there, nestled cozily among Ren's internal organs.

“It's not cowardice.” Hux isn't sure why he's whispering; if She can enter his mind so easily, She can certainly hear him now. “This thing is too dangerous. We have to get rid of it. I don't care how, there has to be a way to--”

“It's too late now.”

“It's not too late. You're still alive.”

“I'm in no danger.”

“What's happening to you?” Hux's whisper turns into a hiss, hot and angry at Ren's ear, and Ren pulls away from him, tosses his head irritably and starts to heave himself over onto his other side. 

“Is that why you came here? To try to interest me in your simple-minded panic?” Hux wants to grab Ren by the shoulders, to shake him, to drag him out of bed and back to medbay and carve Ren's stomach open with his own hands if he has to; if he has to remove Her himself, to grapple with Her physical form, to rip Her screaming and clawing from Ren's flesh, he will. He's seen and done worse, stood steadfast through more dire scenes. He doesn't move, however, stays as he is, his body curved against Ren's back, his hands held limp before him on the pillow.

“You don't remember? You were sick, muttering, delirious. Begging me not to let her take you.”

“I was sick. It was only a fever. It's gone now.”

“Don't be such a fool.” Hux gropes under the covers, prods with his fingertips at the odd contours of Ren's swollen belly. Not like any human pregnancy, all these strange knobs and bumps pressing at the skin from inside. “This thing you're carrying is a monster. Do you really think there's even the slightest chance you'll survive whatever Snoke has to do to get it out of you?”

“Go to sleep,” Ren grunts in reply. “Or if you're going to keep touching me, at least rub my cunt a little. Make me come.” Hux feels an unexpected flush of arousal at those words, slurred and desultory as they are, but he can't be wooed into pleasing Ren now. He can't be expected to concern himself with something as fleeting as sexual pleasure when the actual mortal life of this irreplaceable asset to the First Order is in peril.

“Touch me. I can't go back to sleep.”

“Neither of us is going back to sleep until I have your word that--”

“Stop. You're so dull. Always repeating yourself.” Hux's hand, without any input from him, curves over Ren's hip and settles between his legs. Hux's fingers slide against Ren's wet flesh, and by the time Ren comes Hux has forgotten why he's not in his own bed. His thoughts are muffled, distant, his own release unnecessary, and he swiftly falls asleep again.


End file.
